10 May 08

I worked on the seats almost all day while Hunt worked on fine-tuning the loom. I pulled out a good lay-up of the mounting brackets from last night and put in another. I mounted the first set of brackets for the bottom of the seat while the other set was curing and began to figure out how to mount the seat back. Since the cabin walls don't go all the way up the seat back, the mounting brackets will not work. The back needs to be spaced about 1 3/4" from the S-panel, so we turned an ash dowel on the lathe that I cut into sections that provide adequate standoff for the seat back. I drilled a 1 1/2" hole on the backside of the seat back to accommodate them. I pulled the 2nd set of brackets from the bag and laid up another. While the 3rd set of brackets cured, I worked on mounting the leg support. This was the most technical of the 3 seat sections, because of the potential for interference with the lower control arm. When I went inside to eat dinner, the seat bottom and leg support brackets were mounted, and the seat back had the dowels on it. Hunt had gotten a lot of trials in on the loom, and he changed the geometry and spacing of the rapier and adjusted the heddle travel. After dinner, I came back out to figure out how I was going to trim the seat sections to make them look like they fit together properly. This took awhile, as I needed to securely locate the seat back, which will eventually require a couple of through-bolts and an access hole in the bottom of the chassis. Hunt came up and helped me find some 3 1/2" screws, which will do the trick for the time being. After I mounted the seat back, I ground and sanded the edges of all the panels to give them a uniform reveal and called it a night a few minutes before 11:00pm. Tomorrow, with any luck, I will mount the passenger's side seat and rout out the center sections of the driver's side seat.